


Prepositional Frase (or, Object of the Proposition)

by j_s_cavalcante



Category: due South
Genre: Humor, Intentional Badfic, M/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_s_cavalcante/pseuds/j_s_cavalcante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser's got his nose out of joint, Ray's got the three-point finger-snap down pretty well for a guy who's only been gay a year and a half, and Dief's got the cheese.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prepositional Frase (or, Object of the Proposition)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ulthyrja](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ulthyrja).



> Yes, this is intentional badfic, written for the Intentional Badfic Challenge on ds_flashfiction. The prompt appears at the end. You've been warned.

Inside the apartment that erstwhile-detective Ray Kowalski and the half-wolf Diefenbaker shared with Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP (said apartment being located in Ottawa for reasons that aren’t going to be explored at this juncture, or any other juncture, in fact), the following was heard.

 

Or, well, it would have been heard if there’d been anyone else there to hear it, and if a tree fell, someone would definitely have heard that, and in point of fact, the occupants of said apartment at that time did hear the following themselves, even though they weren’t impartial listeners.

 

Well, okay, the _human_ occupant heard it, because he had not as yet destroyed his hearing by discharging firearms too often without proper ear protection, but the lupo-canine participant in the…thing that might have been heard…didn’t actually _hear_it, he understood it by lip-reading, as he was already deaf. Well, you get the picture. Um, the audio track, anyway:

 

 

“Psst. Dief, buddy. Now, see, these are Fraser’s cards. Turn over Fraser’s cards accidentally on purpose, okay? No, _Fraser’s _cards, not mine. There you go, you got ’em. Hey…that’s good! Atta boy!”

 

_Whuffle!_

“Yes, I owe you a donut. Okay, so you see this? This is two of a kind…”

 

_Snort!_

 

“And this is a royal…oops. I hear something. I’ll hide the cards. Cheezit!”

 

_Mruf?_

 

 “No, dammit, I do not have any cheese!I meant ‘scram’! Fraser’s coming! Shh!”

 

_Snurfle!_

“Aaaah! Will you stop making intimate with my intimate parts?”

 

_Snuffle!_

 

“No, I do _not_ think it’s a good cover. I mean, I’m sure you’re a very sexy wolf to other wolves, and all. It’s just that I don’t want to carry this interspecies communication thing too far.”

 

“Dief! Ooh! Ah! Um…eek! _Dief! _Even Volpe didn’t goose me _there_ when he felt me up…and I kinda liked that. Heh. However, I do not kinda like _this_, big guy! Down, boy!”

 

…

“Jeez!”

 

_Mruf?_

 

“No, Dief, I do _not_ have any cheese. Whaddya mean, cravings?”

 

***

In the hallway just outside the apartment (badly appointed, really quite, and in Ottawa) that Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP; shared with his partner, lover, and friend, the erstwhile detective Ray Kowalski; Fraser’s excellent hearing picked up the following:

 

“Fraser’s coming! Shh! …intimate…my intimate parts…a good cover…sexy wolf…interspecies communication…ing too far…Dief! Ooh! Ah! Um…eek! _Dief!..._Even Volpe didn’t goose me _there_ when he felt me up…kinda liked that…heh…kinda like _this_, big guy! Cheese…what…cravings?”

 

When Fraser flung open the door, Ray was standing in the kitchen washing his hands in the sink and looking…_guilty._

 

Fraser shook himself and turned to look back the way he’d come. The door was open. Oh. That would be because he’d opened it.  Right.

 

Fraser looked down at his hand, still on the doorknob. Yes, Well, then. He cleared his throat.

 

***

 

Dief stood near the refrigerator and whined. He was already quite aware that Fraser was a blooming nutcase, so he paid him no attention whatsoever. When would Ray be forthcoming with the _cheese,_ damn it?__

 

***

 

“Ray! Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray…” Ray (Kowalski, detective, erstwhile) watched as Fraser hit himself in the head. “Oh, that’s better,” Fraser murmured. “I was skipping a bit.”

 

Ray clomped over to the front door of their lovely but not terribly well-appointed Ottawa apartment. “You think you could come in and close the door before you start Ray-Ray-Ray-Ray-Ray-Ray-Raying me?”

 

He took the Stetson out of Fraser’s hands and frisbeed it somewhere.

 

Fraser put his hands on his hips. He looked Ray up and down, pursing his pretty, downturned lips. “You’re not planning to wear _that _to the ball, are you, Ray?”

 

Ray looked down at himself. His fave shirt, his head-kicking boots, and a pair of jeans so tight that his future grandchildren were yelling ‘Uncle!’ Which, he wasn’t going to have any because of this _gay_ thing he had going on, but if he was? They’d be yelling ‘Uncle!’ from the tightness of those jeans.

 

He put his hand up to his hair, found it sticking straight up. (Which, _straight?_ Hah—good one!) He looked _damn hot, _if he had to say so himself_._ And he pretty much did have to.

 

“What, you don’t like my Rawhide t-shirt? That’s not what you said when you were peeling it off me with your teeth last week.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, wondering if there was enough time for a quickie before they had to leave. “Or when you were using it to polish your—”

 

Fraser interrupted, apparently in a hurry. “I like it just fine, Ray, but it’s not appropriate attire for the most formal party the RCMP throws all year.”

 

Ray leaned over and kissed him, trying not to let his roguish stubble scratch Benton’s lily-white cheeks _too_ much. “Relax, you big red doofus.” He punched Fraser in the shoulder for effect.

 

“Ouch,” said Fraser. Also for effect.

 

“I still got my suit,” Ray said. “It’ll just take me a few minutes to hose off in the shower and change.”

 

“Hmph,” said Fraser.

 

“Hmph? Again with the ‘hmph.’” He made the I-don’t understand-fuck-all-about your-hmphs sign with his hands. “Translation?”

 

_“That _suit, Ray? The one you were wearing undercover during the Lady Shoes incident? I believe it was in an explosion, a three-meter fall into an alley, a leap through a plate glass window, and…did I leave out anything relevant?”

 

“Ten minutes in the men’s room at the two-seven,” Ray put in. “Helluva good ten minutes.” He made with the sexy eyebrows again, and gave his hypno—hyper—hypothetical future grandchildren a little pat. “Wanna re-enact that one, Frase? Heh, heh. Seriously, Benton-buddy, the explosion wasn’t your fault. Everything else was you, though. You, you, you. As _you_-sual.” He grinned.

 

“Can the dry cleaner possibly have rehabilitated that suit?” Fraser wanted to know.

 

“I don’t know my reha-whatsits from my…whatever that little bone is in my ass…”

 

“Coccyx?”

 

“Cock-what?”

 

“Later.”

 

“Okay, yeah, right, no time for the cock-whatsits till after the ball.” He did a sexy sideways grin. “So, yeah, they mended it. I mean the suit, not my ass. My ass _still _hurts from when you dropped me. Fraser, are you seriously bringing up the whole Lady Shoes thing? Because I remember a certain Mountie who—”

 

“Never mind that, Ray,” Fraser said, way too quickly for Ray’s comfort. “It’s just that…” he sniffled.

 

“What, you got allergies, now? You allergic to my suit?”

 

Fraser sniffled again, more loudly. Ray knew that Fraser had been taking acting classes in his spare time, and he’d practiced this crap. Unfortunately, since he was still inexplicably broke despite being a well-paid member of the RCMP who had few expenses, he was unable to afford quality instruction, so it was all kind of unconvincing to Ray, who folded his arms over his chest and gave Fraser his best I’m-not-buying-any-of-this-bullshit look with accompanying jerky hand gestures.

 

“You obviously don’t care about me_, _Ray,” Fraser said, pouting. “All the other Mounties will have lovely, well-turned-out partners on their arms. They’ll be dressed to the nines, while you and I are at sixes and sevens—”

 

“Behind the eight ball?” Ray snorted. “Anyway, who’re you saying isn’t turned out? I came out last year to everybody and his second-cousin-once-removed. I had my own freakin’ parade. Say, you think those allergies are from dust?”

 

“Why would you say that, Ray?”

 

“Because nobody’s vacuumed that _closet _you’reliving in in a dog’s age.” He guffawed and made the he-shoots-he-scores sign with both hands.

 

Fraser sighed heavily. “I meant well attired.”

 

“Put new tires on the Goat two weeks ago,” Ray said. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Ben-my-friend.”

 

“I meant well _dressed!”_ Fraser said in an exasperated voice. He undid his Sam Browne angrily.

 

Oh, so this snit was about Ray’s fashion senseagain? Ray wasn’t having any. He dressed just fine, thank you _kindly, _no matter what Vecchio said_. Vecchio_ dressed like a fairy, the dumb palooka. Because how stupid was it to dress like that and not get any of the _fun _part?

 

“Dammit, Fraser, all the other boy Mounties will have _girls_ on their arms. In ballgowns. If that’s what you mean by dressed to the nines, we got a problem, because I do notthink my skinny bod would look good in a dress.”

 

“So it’ll be a perfectly rotten evening, and you’re fine with that?” Fraser grumped, rummaging in the front hall closet for his gloves and his weird white canvas belt—which, Ray thought, who told the Mounties that thing that looked like it belonged on a yacht was more dressy than leather?

 

 “You’ll probably go out and smoke and come back in stinking of it,” Fraser continued, “—and speaking of stinky things, they’re serving asparagus at the ball. Which you’ll eat, because you actually _like _it (go figure), and I won’t be able to go down on you for a week, because, _asparagus? _I have lived among the musk oxen, and I’ve been known to lick unmentionable single-celled lifeforms from the bottoms of shoes (strictly in pursuit of justice, of course), but even I cannot give head to a man who’s been eating asparagus.”

 

“Oh, oh, Mr. ‘I Can Lick Toxic Waste, But I Can’t Swallow My Boyfriend’s Jizz Because He Ate a Vegetable I Don’t Like.’”

 

“We won’t even discuss the caviar,” Fraser said, pouting.

 

“You eat lichen!” Ray yelled, his voice climbing up an octave or so, which was so _girly._ “Fuck you think that crap tastes like! Remember that green, fuzzy bread in the fridge? That was better.”

 

“That was penicillin.”

 

“Yeah, and lucky for me. You just _had_ to fuck around on me back in Chicago, didn’t you, and catch that nasty…whatever that nasty clap was you caught.”

 

“You were ignoring me,” Fraser said, still pouting. “I felt unappreciated. Anyway, I cured it with an extract from the hoof of—”

 

“Gross! Do _not _tell me.”

 

 “Well, of course not, Ray. I wouldnever want to disgust you. It was totally my fault, of course.” Which, Ray knew he meant exactly the opposite.

 

“Actually, Frase, it was.”

 

Like Fraser was listening? Not. “It’s just that a man—well, even a Mountie who’s practically perfect in every way—does get occasional _urges_ and _needs _and so on, and since you were ignoring me, I should have been able to talk to my _other _best friend about it, but he was out impregnating half the stray dog population of Chicago. But let’s not go there. If we discuss _his _animal urges, we’ll be discussing all night.”

 

Ray shook himself all over. Twice. Sometimes Fraser jumped the track so far he was on a different railroad. “What’s the real issue here, Fraser? Because I am not buying this snobby ‘dress-to-the-nines’ crap from the guy who was perfectly happy to drive a dogsled across a zillion kilometers of Arctic wasteland for two months without taking a shower.”

 

“Oh, Ray. You know that—like any manly man—I’m uncomfortable talking about my feelings.”

 

“Right, Mary Poppins.” Ray did the three-point finger-snap pretty well for a guy who’d only been gay for a year and a half. “Spill it, Butch.”

 

Unfortunately, Ray obviously didn’t have the mojo down yet, because Fraser went all passive-aggressive on him (who, _Fraser?_ You don’t say!) and made a show of checking his RCMP-issue watch, which he’d inherited from his father. “Oh, dear. No time at present. We’ll be late.”

 

“I’ll get it out of you later,” Ray promised, heading for the bedroom to find his Perfectly Good Suit, damn it.

 

Behind him he could’ve sworn he heard Fraser saying to Dief, “No, we do not have any cheese, you two-timing homebreaker.”

 

***

 

So that was all that was, shall we say, _heard _in the Fraser-Kowalski residence (not well appointed, but near all the cheap restaurants, in Ottawa), if someone else had been there to hear it, the only other living occupants of the apartment being a deaf wolf and a dumb turtle, until much later.

 

In meantime, there was the RCMP fancy dress ball to attend. Which, it was a good thing Ray danced well by himself, because Fraser? Fraser danced like a stick of wood.

 

And there was the dinner—real food, no caribou, and lots of little pastry things with asparagus in them, which Ray drooled over but didn’t touch, because: asparagus, head. Asparagus, head. Asparagus…did anybody honestly think he’d choose asparagus over one of Fraser’s mind-altering blowjobs? Not!

 

As for caviar, of which there was none, if there had been any, Ray wouldn’t have eaten that, either. Because: head, later. It was a date. Dot it, file it, write it in the appointment calendar, Ray was getting some later. After he got out of Fraser whatever was yanking his chain, and buttered him up, and made him feel all manly and perfect. Then Fraser would put out. Ray had it in hand. (Heh, well, he _would_have it in hand, in mouth, in…yeah.)

 

Still, worming the truth out of Fraser was usually more of a production than worming Dief, and Ray was not going any further with _that _metaphor (yuck). He stood by the bowl of nonalcoholic punch and thought. He could have another three-hour argument with His Fraserness, or he could…yeah.

 

Ray slipped the flask out of his pocket and spiked Fraser’s punch.

 

***

 

In a corner of the ballroom at the RCMP fancy dress ball, Ray made his move. He was not wearing a tux like most of the other RCMP male dates, but still looked _fine _(if you asked him) in his rehabilitationed suit, his head-kicking boots (polished up) and his kickass-punk hair—and best of all, he was _not _holding a purse, like all of the other guys in civvies. Ray had his own mojo, and he used it to give Fraser (who was just a tad lit from the vodkain his punch) a surreptitious wedgie until the Mountie spilled what was bothering him. Christ, it took a lot to get under that thick skin.

 

***

 

In the opposite corner of the room, Diefenbaker, who was allowed at the ball owing to the fact that he was a decorated member of the RCMP K-9 force, nosed Constable Turnbull’s hand. He smelled _cheese._

 

It figured. As usual, the human Mounties were hiding the good stuff, and Diefenbaker would be damned if he was going to leave here before he conned somebody out of it. Turnbull was always a good mark.

 

Dief laughed a wolfy laugh to himself as Turnbull fell over himself in his eagerness to get Dief a nice treat. So, Ray thought he could teach this old wolf a few card tricks, eh? Ray was the biggest pushover in the world. Getting a donut out of him was easier than chasing a squirrel into a tree. _Chump._

Dief loved him, though, so he wasn’t going to interfere while Ray fixed whatever silly human concern was yanking Fraser’s tail today. The two of them would yak at each other for hours and then start that icky snogging, and then eventually they’d hump like _humans_ (seriously, a species that has mating season 365 days a year? Sick.) Then everything would be better.

 

Dief sat back happily and waited for his cheese. Maybe he should talk to Turnbull about a card game.

 

***

Fraser was Not Amused. Once he had squirmed around sufficiently to relieve the painful condition inflicted upon him by Ray’s enthusiastic groping and an inconveniently tight pair of boxer shorts, he asked icily, “What happened to my being the only one who can communicate with Dief, Ray? When did that change?”

 

“You were out on patrol.”

 

“What is going _on_ between you two?” Fraser demanded.

 

“What could be going on?” Ray said. “I like the fuzzy mutt. I smuggle him donuts—but you already know that.”

 

“What is it you like so much about him?” Fraser tried to sound casual, so Ray, who was after all a professional interrogator, wouldn’t realize he was getting the third degree.

 

“You mean, besides the fact that he watched my grand slam video 432 times?” Ray appeared mystified, but Fraser suspected it was all a clever ruse. Ray was very clever. It was one of the things Fraser liked so much about him…oh, dear. He had better not think about all the reasons he liked Ray very much, or he might _cry, _and a Mountie did not cry. Especially not in front of the brass. Fraser sniffed. “Yes. Besides that.”

 

Ray shrugged, and started ticking off some items on his fingers. “Well, uh…he licks my ears, Fraser—which, I didn’t use to like that, but now it kinda tickles in a good way. Um. He never complains when I get doughnuts for breakfast or pizza for dinner, and he has never once had a problem with a little dust—or dirty socks on the floor, underwear on the lampshade, three inches of grime on the stove… you know.”

 

Ray grinned. “Or the fact that I can’t aim, if you know what I mean, without my glasses.” He made one of those inexplicable gestures with both hands. Fraser wondered if it were some unusual Chicago variant of American Sign Language.

 

Ray went on, “You make like Hazel with the Lysol and the scrubbing bubbles and the…stuff…. Not cool. Dief? He just thinks I’m scent-marking the bathroom.”

 

“Which in fact you are.”

 

“Not on purpose.”

 

“That’s not important. What is important is that you’re going to have to choose, Ray.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Who has your loyalty, Dief or me?”

 

“What, it can’t be both? Dief’s _your _uh, friend…but he likes me, too. He doesn’t have a problem with that. I don’t have a problem with that. Why do you?”

 

“Well, Ray, the evidence would point to some sort of unnatural relationship between you and Diefenbaker, and I for one am not going to stand for it.”

 

***

 

_What? _Fraser had clearly left Planet Sanity behind.

 

“_Unnatural relationship? _What the fuck? What evidence?”

 

Fraser sniffled. “You used to call me Ben,” he said with what sounded suspiciously like a sob. Christ, that crappy acting class. Ray would have liked to kick the teacher’s head across Canada, but the guy was making commercials in Toronto this week.

 

Ray shook his head and banged it with the flat of his palm, like something was stuck inside his brain and he was trying to rattle it loose.

 

“Yeah, when you vaguely seem like somebody I _know! _What the fuck happened to you, Fr—uh, Ben?”

 

“What happened to theRay I used to know? The Ray who needed me, the Ray who couldn’t shoot anything smaller than a full-size sedan without glasses, the Ray who couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag without my help?”

 

“He’s in Florida with Stella.”

 

“Oh. Right. Well, what happened to Ray-my-lover who promised his fidelity for ever and ever with only one minor exception?” Fraser got a suspicious look in his eye. “You didn’t happen to meet a supermodel, did you?”

 

“No, you idiot. I haven’t even had a visitor lately. It’s just been me and Dief the entire time you were on patrol. I wore out the deck of cards and had to get a new one.” He couldn’t believe he was totally getting the third degree from_ Fraser. _Polite cop, Ray’s ass.

 

“Oh, God, it’s what I was afraid of! You—you—dirty cheater!” the Mountie spluttered most unhygienically. (Heh. Three-dollar word, and Ray knew it. Ray totally ruled.) “You and Diefenbaker!”

 

Oh, no. How did Constable Sherlock figure out what Ray and Dief had been doing with the poker deck? Shit. “Frase, I can explain that…”

 

_“Explain?_ Do you realize the position you’ve put me in? If I find any evidence, I’m going to have to arrest you, Ray. Bestiality is a crime in Canada.”

 

Ray squinted at him. _Bestiality? _Obviously Ray had the wrong glasses with him, because these were messing with his hearing. Which was strange, as they were still in his pocket. Oh, wait. No. It wasn’t Ray. It was Fraser—_who had a fucking screw loose._

 

“It’s a crime in the US, too, but you ain’t arresting nobody. _Because nobody’s been doing it!”_

“Ray, do you mean to tell me—” Fraser sounded both disbelieving and hopeful at the same time, which was a neat trick.

 

“Jeez, Fraser, spare me the tabloid newspaper headline. How could you think I would be two-timing you with a _dog?”_

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Fraser said snootily. “Since Diefenbaker is a half-_wolf_…”

 

“Dog, wolf, Canis Lupus, Canis Canis, who the fuck cares?”

 

“Dief cares. I am appalled that you are so insensitive to his feelings, Ray. But obviously you care very little about any of your lovers.” Fraser sniffled.

 

(Across the room, Diefenbaker heard all this nonsense, but he didn’t give a fuck, since Turnbull was so _easy. _He bumped his nose against Turnbull’s leg. Turnbull scratched him behind his ears and gave Dief a big hunk of brie off his plate. Dief totally ruled.)

 

“Any of my—what, now you think I’ve been screwing the whole town? We’re living, for reasons that nobody’s explaining at this juncture or any other, a short taxi ride away from the Mother Ship. Everybody knows you, Benton—also for reasons we’re not getting into—and therefore they also know me. You think Mountie tongues wouldn’t be wagging if I suddenly started screwing around town?”

 

“Well, stranger things have been known to happen, Ray. One hears stories in the far north. There was a trapper living near—”

 

“I don’t _care_ about the trapper from Northwest Bumfuck, BC, Fraser! I’m not him!” Ray had had enough. He took the megaphonic—metaspherical—imaginary gloves off. “Okay, so…I just want you to know, _Ben,_” he said sweetly.

 

“What, Ray?” Fraser said, looking deeply into his eyes, all hopeful and forlorn and stuff. (Which, hah! Bad acting.)

 

 “It never meant anything to me.”

“What didn’t?” Fraser looked stymied now.

 

“Me and Dief. It was never serious.” He waited a beat. “It was just sex.”

 

“WHAT?!”

 

“Fuck-buddies,” Ray said, and smirked, but then he had to start running for the other side of the ballroom fast, dodging the ladies in the long skirts, and the guys in the rented patent-leather shoes that pinched, and a few of the band instruments, too, because the band was just then getting up to take a break.

 

Fraser chased him like Ray was hiding a year’s supply of pemmican in his trousers, which he sure as fuck _wasn’t, _because he wanted what _was_ in his trousers to survive. “It was just fuck-buddies, I swear,” he called over his shoulder, but he was laughing. “Dief’s lonely. You were on patrol.”

 

Ray let Fraser catch him by the far wall, almost up against the ugly flocked wallpaper, which, why was Ray even noticing that? He’d only been gay a year and a half and he was noticing the interior decorating? Fuck that.

 

Ray wasn’t breathing that hard; he could probably outrun Fraser easy these days, what with Ray being skinny and long-legged, and Fraser having that back problem. But Ray didn’t have to keep running, because he could see Fraser starting to look really, really confused, which was a really big improvement over his pissy-assed-Mountie expression.

 

“Jesus, Ben. What if Dief and I were planning something special for your birthday? You going to accuse us of unnatural acts just ’cause we’re conspiring, even if it’s about something totally innocent?”

 

“What could you and he possibly be planning, Ray?” Fraser said in the snarkiest of his snarky voices. “—a threesome?”

 

Crap. Ray would show Fraser how it was done. “Stop it! Stop it—stop it—stop it!” Ray yelled, spilling two big, fat tears just like _that._ “You don’t care about our feelings.”

 

More tears followed, making huge grimy tracks down Ray’s face, because seriously? He’d forgotten to wash his face. Anyway, the tears were solving that problem. He was making like Niagara Falls inside of a minute. Heh. Two words: Method Acting.

 

Ray didn’t need no stinkin’ class. Ray was a natural.

 

“Oh, heavens, don’t do that to me, Ray. You know how I can’t stand it when you weep uncontrollably.”

 

“Yeah,” said Ray, brightening through his tears, but still making them rain down pretty impressively. “Come to think of it, that’s how this whole thing started.”

 

“What whole thing?”

 

“What, you weren’t there? It was some other Mountie helped me save Beth Botrelle from the needle?”

 

“Oh, that.”

 

“Yeah. Me bawling. You comforting me. You grabbing my dick. You sucking me off, there in her driveway. Misdemeanor offense, by the way, and you’ll notice I didn’t arrest you, because it is _not _polite to arrest a guy who just cleaned your pipes.”

 

Ray smiled, remembering. “You taking me home to my apartment and fucking me up the ass. Come to think of it, Benton, it was pretty much all you. You made me your bitch that night.”

 

“Well,” Benton said modestly, coughing into his hand. He seemed to be coming out of his bout of temporary insanity. “I _am _a Mountie. Tall, macho, incredibly well-read, and stacked like a brick—”

 

“Library,” Ray added helpfully. “You sing well, too. But why am I _always _your bottom boy? When ya’ gonna let me be on top, huh, Benton, huh?” He turned his tears off just like that and put up his dukes, dancing around Benton. Shadow-boxing. He had Fraser right where he wanted him. _Watch out, Benton! You never see the one that kayoes you, buddy._

 

***

 

Benton smiled indulgently. Ray was so cute when he was pretending to be macho. The little fairy even thought he could box. Pshaw. The Marquis of Queensbury would have had hysterics. Benton would let Ray tire himself out and then Benton would, as usual, get the upper hand. Not to mention the upper cock.

 

“C’mon, Fraser, you owe me this. Put ’em up.”

 

“Ray.”

 

“You’ve had this coming for a long time, buddy. You pulled my pants down in Beth Botrelle’s driveway, for the love of Pete.”

 

“So, you’ve been cuckolding me with someone named Pete as well?”

 

“Cucko-what?”

 

“Never mind. Ray, do you think you could perhaps invest in a good dictionary?”

 

“Cuckoo is what you are, Frase. Out there on the tundra, you must’ve frozen something important in your brain. We better get you to a hospital.”

 

“Possibly.”

 

“So, you think about whether we can turn the tables, so to speak, in the bedroom?”

 

Fraser cocked his head to the side and squinted, trying to sort through that furniture metaphor.

 

“At least Dief lets me be on top.”

 

“Ray!”

 

“Just kidding!”

 

“Being on top means so much to you, then?” It was clearly time for a little reciprocation of the guilt-trip kind. “You’d leave me over this, would you, Ray? You wouldn’t care if I had to live all alone in the Arctic Circle, do you? In a cabin with no indoor plumbing in a town with 42 inhabitants, a mad taxidermist, and a caribou herd.”

 

“Come off it, Ben.”

 

“So this is where you’re heading, is it? You’ll go back to Chicago without me, and I will be alone for the rest of my life. I will pine away for you and never recover, but I won’t quite die of it, unfortunately. I will never think of you except every other hour, and when I do, I’ll cry. I’ll never have another lover. I don’t even deserve the romantic company of my own hand. Except on my birthday. I should get a birthday wank every year, shouldn’t I?”

 

“Don’t start with that, ‘I never had a good Christmas or birthday in my life’ story. Heard that one.”

 

“Right. Well, this is worse than all that. You’re planning to break my heart.”

 

“No, I’m not.”

 

“Yes, you are.”

 

“No, I’m not.”

 

“Yes, you most certainly are.”

 

“No, I most certainly the fuck am not.” Clearly Ray wasn’t having any.

 

Enough was enough. Benton was fatigued, and right now, he didn’t care who got on top in the bedroom as long as he got to sleep in a bed tonight, instead of dozing off standing up in a moving dogsled.

 

(The reasons why he had traveled back to Ottawa in a dogsled, when Ottawa is a very quaint but thoroughly modern city, don’t need to be explored at this juncture. And they won’t be.)

 

Benton sighed. “Well, all right, then. I’m glad we got that settled.”

 

Ray put his dukes down, looking pleased. “Yeah. So. We still partners?”

 

“In what respect?”

 

“The one where we fuck. Everything else I can take or leave.” Ray made another complicated gesture with his lovely, expressive, _long-fingered_ hands (ask Benton how he knew) and Benton looked around quickly to make sure none of the brass had seen it, because it was on the obscene side.

 

“Absolutely, Ray. But you’re not asking me to do you up against this wall with the very strange wallpaper as I did in the corridor outside Ray Vecchio’s hospital room, are you? Because I have to tell you, the RCMP tend to frown on that sort of thing during their fancy-dress ball.”

 

“Nah. Wouldn’t be the same without Frannie standing there pregnant and cheering us on, anyway. That was fun, huh?”

 

“Indubitably. I still wonder what the nurses meant by holding up those signs marked ‘10,’ though.”

 

“Tell you another time.” Ray gave him a sexy little smile. “Can I suck you off in the men’s room, though?”

 

“Certainly, Ray.”

 

“RCMP okay with that?”

 

“No, but I’ve taken the liberty of writing myself a reprimand ahead of time in the event this would happen, and I’ve already placed it in my file, so we might as well indulge.”

 

“Works for me.”

 

“What about Diefenbaker?” Fraser asked.

 

“Um, I’d say ‘fuck Dief,’ but I don’t think you’d find it funny, right?”

 

“Right.” Fraser cleared his throat. “Ray, can you answer one thing before we go, ah, I believe you would say, ‘do the wild thing’ in some semi-public place?”

 

Ray shrugged. “Sure.”

 

“What _were_ you and Dief doing just before I arrived back in the apartment? I overheard a conversation between you that sounded most suspicious and included talk of _groping_ and _intimate parts_ and _cravings. _And”—he sniffled, just a little (two could play at that game; even if Ray was a natural, Benton had professional training)—“cheating on me.”

 

Ray blinked. “Huh? Oh! We were talking about _cheating_ you, you dumb ass. Not cheating _on _you.” He laughed in that thoroughly charming and somewhat odd way of his. “I was teaching Dief how to cheat at poker. He totally stole your aces. He’s getting good.”

 

“Corrupting my wolf, Ray? That just…”

 

“Oh, I’ll corrupt something of yours. Ain’t gonna be your wolf.”

 

Fraser probably had a good retort for that, but he forgot it entirely when Ray grabbed his ass and said, “Hey, forget the men’s room. Why don’t we blow this maple-sugar candy stand and get home to the apartment (in the cheap neighborhood, in Ottawa), and then we can be all alone when we do the nasty?”

 

“Again I must ask, what about Dief? What shall we—”

 

Ray pointed. “Look. He’s got a card game going with Turnbull, Cooper, and Do-Right.”

 

“Constable Do-Right is here?” Benton craned his neck to see across the room.

 

“Yeah. Good old Dudley. Never gets his man. Or woman. Still trying to get a date with that chick he untied from the railroad tracks.” Ray snort-laughed, sounding quite a lot like a donkey with a case of bronchitis.

 

“And that amuses you because…?”

 

“Heh. You didn’t see it? He goes up to her tonight, all ‘Penelope, may I have the honor of a dance?’ And she says, all sweetness and light, it’s Mrs. Whiplash now. You should’ve seen Dudley’s face.”

 

***

 

Fraser groaned a sorry-I-asked groan, which, actually, Ray had never heard him do before.

 

Ray just laughed. He totally ruled. A) He’d brought Fraser out of a major snit with just his dazzling wit and a small shot of vodka (Fraser was such a lightweight).

 

2) He was _finally_ going to get to top Fraser in bed—well, maybe, but if not, he would still have a good time.

 

And C) Dief was going to stay behind with Turnbull to indulge his cheese cravings and practice his poker-cheating skills, leaving Ray and Fraser alone to do the wild thing and make Ray’s heart sing. All night.

 

Greatness.

 

Ray got Fraser out of there faster than Fraser could say “Hide!” in Inuktitut, and drove him back to the apartment in record time. He broke the speed limit, but Fraser didn’t arrest him, because Fraser was also about to Get Some, so he probably didn’t even notice the speedometer, and all the other Mounties were still at the ball, so who was going to give out tickets? The Ottawa police? Mwahahaha!

 

Weirdly enough (okay, no, this was same old, same old, for Fraser) Fraser was waxing philo-whatsical before they were even in the door of their apartment. “Tonight could have far-reaching effects, you know. Do you realize the ramifications of our relationship, Ray?”

 

Ray pushed him all the way into the apartment and closed and locked the door. “Hey, wait a second. I’m doing the ramifying tonight. You promised! Your ass is mine.”

 

“Indubitably, Ray. You may have me in all my Mountified, ass-virginal glory tonight. You may deflower me between our conjugal sheets (which are coarse but lily-white because I bleach them with something very harsh that contains homemade lye soap). You may, I assure you, totally have my bodunkadunk booty tonight. My bad self…is yours.”

 

“Good.” Ray was no way going to try to translate that. “So if anybody’s ramifying tonight_, and I think someone is _(ooh, now he had that snap down!) that somebody is me.”

 

“Er, certainly, Ray. But what I was getting at was, do you realize what our liaison—our personal liaison—means to mankind?”

 

“I know what it means to myman-_hood_,” Ray said, smirking and making the I’m-totally-getting-some-tonight sign with both hands. Said manhood was threatening to bust out of Ray’s suit pants if it didn’t get some attention soon. He wiggled his hips.

 

“If you and I,” said Fraser, continuing on like he didn’t notice Ray was throwing a _prong_ here, “who are contemporary masculine embodiments of the archetypical law-enforcement personnel…if you and I become one flesh, forsaking all others, and—”

 

“Doing that cleaving-unto thing, you mean?”

 

“Precisely. It will lead to greater freedom for all male police characters everywhere. Even possibly on the WB. Probably not on the Spike Network, though. Or Court TV.”

 

“Fraser, you been watching the idiot box way too much.”

 

“Well, no, Ray, as you know, I’ve been out on patrol living among the Inuit and the musk oxen, but I did rig an audio receiver from a paper clip and a stick of your chewing gum, and I was able to bring in a couple of broadcasts. Of course, I had to convert from the binary code.”__

 

“Whoops, I just came out of my coma. Please don’t repeat anything you said in that long-winded and totally propositional—prepositional—uh, preposterious paragraph, okay?”

 

“Er…all right.”

 

“When I say okay, you can’t just say okay? You have to say ‘all right’ just to be different or to correct me, or to do that niggling thing you do with the ayes and the tees?”

 

“Very well, Ray.”

 

“I am _so_ going to kick you in the head.”

 

 “I’d much rather you—”

 

“Yeah, me too. So now we get to have a long-winded and completely gratuitous session of wild gay fucking, yes?”

 

“Gratifying, Ray. Not gratuitous.”

 

“Yeah, that. With me doing the fucking.”

 

“As agreed,” Fraser said mildly.

 

Ray opened his pants and let them drop, which, since he had no hips (unlike Fraser of the incredibly bodacious backside) dropped like a stone. Ray smiled.

 

***

 

The ensuing conversation might or might not have been heard by a small box turtle, who was the only other sentient being in the apartment, and portions of the exchange might or might not have been heard by neighbors, but they were Canadians, and therefore far too polite ever to mention it.

 

“My pants fell off. Oops.”

 

“Oh, dear. We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we, Ray?”

 

“I think.”

 

“Right. Well.” There are sounds of clothes being removed rapidly.

 

“Okay, then.” Something tears, and there are several _pings_ that sound a lot like brass buttons hitting a wooden floor.

 

“Bedroom?”

 

“Fuck it. Floor. I’m too hot for you, Benton.”

 

“And I for you, Ray.”

 

“Ohhh. Ooh.”

 

“Ah. _Ah.”_

_“Yes. _Benton! Yes. Oh! Stop…stop, wait. Okay!”

 

“Lubricant?”

 

“Spit.”

 

“Does that work in real life, Ray, or only in the movies?”

 

“You really asking me that _now,_ Benton?”

 

“Oh, I take your point. _OH!..._I, er,_ take _your _point_.

 

“Heh. Ain’t all you’re taking, Ben.”

 

“No, I see that. Ooh! Urgh! Ray, you are so enormously well-endowed.”

 

“Heh. Knew that.”

 

“Well, of course, you—aaaaahhhhhh!”

 

“Bingo! Finally nailed the Mountie. _Unh….unh...”_

 

“Ooh, oh, yes. Yessssss!”

 

“Oh, Frase, Ben…_Bennnnn!!!”_

 

 

There were more sounds along those lines, and they continued for quite some time, but you get the basic idea.

 

***

 

Across town at the post-RCMP-fancy-dress-ball poker game, Diefenbaker was gorging himself on assorted cheeses, which would probably have unfortunate consequences on the morrow, and cheating the pants off Turnbull. Luckily for everyone present, Diefenbaker had designs only on any food products Turnbull might care to offer him, and Turnbull just wanted his pants back.

 

***

 

Ray smoked a cigarette in bed after all the gymnastics. Which, he knew Fraser was supposed to think Ray didn’t smoke, but Ray’d blown it long ago. One, by whipping out a lighter in front of Motherwell—because what nonsmoker carried around a lighter?

 

And B, during the Botrelle thing, by wearing those black pants which showed the perfect outline of the pack of Marlboros in his right front pocket when he walked. Fraser had been staring at the front of Ray’s pants all that day for reasons that Ray figured out in Beth Botrelle’s driveway a few nights later, and at that point, Ray realized Fraser pretty much knew everything about what Ray kept in his pants. So Ray thought _what-the-fuck,_ and he finally lit up after letting Fraser have his ass that night.

 

And Mr. Perfect Mountie was all, like, I don’t care if you smoke the whole pack after that incredible fuck, Ray. Except he’d called it something more printable and multisyllabic, like, delightful act of intercourse or some dumb thing like that.

 

So, by now, Fraser sure as hell knew Ray smoked, and after a really good fuck, which this totally had been, he was fine with Ray lighting up, and he didn’t even cough or pretend it bothered him. Ray knew it had to smell a hell of a lot better than hallucinogenic, expired caribou.

 

“Fraser,” Ray said, blowing a perfect smoke ring that drifted into the shape of a valentine heart and then sort of smudged into a maple-leaf shape if you squinted.

 

“Yes, Ray?” Fraser had that look on his face that said Ray was The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Fraser. Which in fact he was.

 

“The only muzzle I want in my crotch is yours.”

 

“Oh, Ray,” Fraser said. “You say the most romantic things.”

 

 

(End—thank goodness!)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Intentional Badfic Challenge on ds_flashfiction  
> Prompt: Fraser thinks Ray's cheating him with Dief.   
> [emphasis added; please note the missing preposition]  
> "OMG. What else can explain his weird cravings and those noises? Fraser MUST fight for the love of his soul mate as he ponders the meaning of life in Canada. Truth will be REVEALED at Mounties annual dance ball, when Ben confronts Ray and Dief. Man or beast? That is the question that will change the course of mankind forever. Warnings: animals and stuff..." Prompt written by: ulthyrja
> 
> Disclaimer: No wolf, turtle, or human was harmed during the writing of this story.


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